“Molecular Biology 101: From DNA to Human Complexity” is an introductory course
for non-majors that takes a new approach to teaching the basics through
lectures and labs.

Below left: Professors Bonnie Bassler (seated on table), Heather Thieringer (standing in
rear) and Eric Wieschaus (third from right) have teamed up to teach the class since its inception four years ago.

Students gain scientific savvy in popular biology course for humanities majors

Posted December 12, 2005; 03:37 p.m.

by Denise Barricklow

Freshman Emily Miller never thought fulfilling her
science requirement would be so much fun: Imagine getting to clone some of your
own DNA, replicating part of a Nobel Prize-winning experiment or actually
staying awake — and understanding! — when your professor starts talking about
things like “cell differentiation” and “genome codes.”

“In general, science topics do not interest me, but I love this
class,” said Miller, who this fall enrolled in “Molecular Biology 101: From DNA
to Human Complexity,” an introductory course for non-majors that takes a new
approach to teaching the basics. “Rather than simply lecturing about the minute
details of molecular biology, the professors show us how it applies to real
life.”

MOL101 was developed four years ago by three renowned Princeton
professors to help address a disturbing national problem: Too many Americans
are intimidated by and ignorant of science in an era when a basic understanding
of molecular biology, in particular, has never been more important.

“We felt as a faculty that we were not doing our job as educators
because we did not have a modern class for non-majors,” said one of the
course’s leaders, Bonnie Bassler, a professor of molecular biology and a 2002
MacArthur “genius grant” winner. “We really believe that you cannot get through
this life without knowing biology. It is the science of the century. You need
to know about biology to think about your health care, to decide on what food
you’re going to eat. You need it to understand how cells work to be able to
vote on issues like stem cell research. You need it to understand DNA
forensics, so you can serve on a jury.”

Each year Bassler teams up with 1995 Nobel Prize winner Eric
Wieschaus, the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology, and geneticist Heather
Thieringer, a lecturer in the department, to teach humanities majors the
fundamentals of molecular biology. Lectures address topics currently of public
interest, including cloning, stem cell therapies, genetically modified foods,
drug-resistant bacteria, how DNA fingerprinting is used in criminal cases and
why some people are obese or aggressive.

Though many students said they were taking MOL101 to fulfill the
science and lab courses required for graduation from Princeton, they give the
class high marks for being unexpectedly interesting. “The professors are fun
and so passionate about what they teach; they bring enthusiasm to every lecture
and it is contagious,” said freshman Samantha O’Hara. “The 50 minutes fly by.”

The professors say they strive to teach the subject matter in a way
that is informative, entertaining and not intimidating. “People are so scared
of science,” Bassler observed. “We try to teach them that they don’t need to be
afraid, that they can sit down and read the science section of The New York
Times or those articles in Scientific American. They just have to learn some of
the lingo.”

The professors insist such education is critical in a country where
science permeates the debates on everything from stem cells to global warming,
yet an alarming number of Americans lack the knowledge necessary to make
informed choices. Supporting their concerns are national surveys which have
revealed, for example, that one in five adults thinks the sun revolves around
the Earth, fewer than a third of Americans can identify DNA as a key to
heredity and most people do not know what molecules are.

“Scientific illiteracy is shocking because people make decisions
in spite of not knowing things that are available for them to know,” said
Wieschaus. “But our social and ethical considerations have to be based on
reality, on the facts — what it is when we talk about DNA testing, forensics,
genetics and human behavior. You can’t deal with any of these topics unless you
know what a gene is and how a gene product functions in a cell.”

Students learn about such topics not just from lectures, but also
in the labs, which they cited as an exciting part of MOL101. Thieringer is the
guiding force here, and she runs all the experiments based on a simple
educational philosophy: “Labs don’t have to be something that students dread.
We want our students to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to do something in lab today.
It’s going to be fun.’”

In the lab, the students actually get to clone part of their own
DNA using a procedure called polymerase chain reaction or PCR. “I really liked
our PCR lab,” said junior Abigail Langer. “It was so incredible to be able to
analyze your own genes. I know it sounds really dorky, but seeing yourself on a
molecular level is really cool, and how many other opportunities is a German
major like me ever going to get to sequence her own DNA?”

In other labs, the students observe cells dividing and see
chromosomes pulling apart, and they even perform some of the same experiments
on fruit fly embryos that led Wieschaus to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine.

Students observe and analyze four “mystery” embryos that contain
particular genetic mutations and compare them to “mug shots” of sample dead
embryos. “The students have (fly) lines that are still from the original
Heidelberg screen,” said Wieschaus. “Different lines produce different kinds of
things that are abnormal, and the students just have to look at the embryos and
figure out which of them are abnormal and why — and what must have gone wrong.”

Through this lab, the students gain insight into why their
professor’s work was so groundbreaking: By painstakingly identifying and
classifying these mutations, Wieschaus, along with German scientist Christiane
Nusslein-Volhard, was able to show how genes control the overall development of
the body plan not just of fruit flies but also higher organisms such as humans.
The breakthrough could help scientists explain birth defects and cancers.

In highlighting these larger connections, the professors said they
hope their students will come to see why molecular biology is so important —
and fascinating. “The things that we know about DNA are one of the great
accomplishments of the past century,” said Wieschaus. “Even beyond the social
issues, the pure beauty of scientific understanding is amazing.”